I was cleaning up a back-up folder,
opened /23730-h.htm to find out what it was,
and it turned out to be the Gutenberg edition of

THE PROMISE

A Tale of the Great Northwest
By
JAMES B. HENDRYX

1915

I was surprised to discover that I'm as fond of northerns as I ever
was, and I'm several chapters in.

The plot is composed entirely of improbable co-incidences -- which was
a plus at the time of writing. Like the detailed descriptions of
activities related to the first step in reproduction that "spice up"
today's fiction, the more co-incidences you can shoehorn into a story,
the better.

Unlike the co-incidences in _Adele or The Shipwrecked Girl_ by Mrs. S.
B. C. Samuels 1870 (Example: the missing girl and the brother who is
searching for her take the same train, but don't happen to see one
another), these co-incidences arise naturally out of the plot, and
many of them are foreshadowed.

11:41 PM 11/27/2023

In chapter XXXIII, we finally find out what the title means.

CHAPTER XLVI

The elderly CEOs can snowshoe out because they need to get back to
their jobs, but their wives are trapped in camp for the whole winter?

Well, it's partly because of the plot: to resolve the romance, Evelyn
must stay the winter, and an unmarried girl can't stay in a lumber
camp without chaperones.

And Jeanne, though delicate and beautiful, worked as hard as the men
when they were hiding the birdseye, and proved to be smarter than Bill
when it came to keeping it hidden.

21:52:11 Tuesday, 28 November 2023

I was disappointed that Evelyn didn't offer to help the overburdened
camp cook instead of swanning about the camp amusing herself all
winter. And Charlie could learn quite a lot by being apprenticed to
as experienced a man as the cook is. Not to mention that having
something useful to do might take his mind off necessitating dramatic
rescues.

At least part of Evelyn's amusement consisted of going out into the
woods with a rifle and bringing back birds and small game, which would
supply tasty appetisers for the men.

The story is a fantasy, in that looking into a man's eyes will tell
you exactly what sort of man he is, in particular eyes label the
superhuman *man*.

And character is inherited; our protagonist is the man who cannot die
because his uncle was a war hero.

There aren't a lot of chapters left; the promise laid on the
mantlepiece in chapter XXXIII must be discharged soon.

I ran a search for bakneesh; *all* of the hits were quotes from
Curwood Novels. (I vaguely recall liking Curwood a lot when I was a
teenager and could read a book a day.) The quotes did inform me that
it's a red vine with blue flowers.

People who enjoy SF where the author throws you into his created world
without any time-travelling guide should read some nineteenth-century
popular literature.

21:26:41 Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Aforementioned dramatic rescue depended on a co-incidence -- but there
was reason to think the child might be where Bill looked for him.

6:04 PM 12/3/2023 Sunday, 3 December 2023

Jeanne should have shouted "Moncrossen shot my brother and is starving
my mother!"; indeed, she *would* have shouted the summary of her
troubles. But that would have prevented the dramatic scene in which
she reveals the truth to Evelyn.

Co-incidence wise, I think that the hilt would have appeared at the
precise moment that Bill and Evelyn have been pronounced superman and
wife in any novel of any century.

I was disappointed that Jeanne disappeared into the woods, without any
resolution of her story. I believe that this was romantic at the
time.

I don't think that someone shot square in the middle, who passed out
only a few seconds after being shot, would be able to sleep it off
without modern medical care.

It seems to be a law of the adventure-story world that one recovers
completely and without any after-effects other than picturesque scars
from any injury that isn't instantly fatal.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at centurylink dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/